Fabrication and Acceptance Testing of the Half-Scale Model GA-4 Legal-Weight Truck Cask*

General Atomics (GA), under contract to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE),• developed two legal-weight truck shipping casks with trailers for transport of reactor spent\"fuel. The GA-4 and GA-9 casks are designed to transport four pressurized-water-reactor and nine boiling-water-reactor spent-fuel assemblies, respectively. A description of the cask designs and development can be found in the References. In 1995 GA completed a half-scale model of the GA-4 cask, which was recently used for verification testing in support of the structural analysis presented in the Safety Analysis Report for Packaging (SARP). GA procured the cask model utilizing the coordinated efforts of three main subcontractors. Manufacturing Sciences Corporation (MSC), Oak Ridge, TN, supplied the five depleted uranium rings that form the gamma shield. The cask body (Fig. 1) was manufactured by Precision Components Corporation (PCC), York, PA, including assembly of the DU rings between the cavity liner and the outer shell. Five scale model honeycomb impact limiters were produced by Lee Goebel Enterprises (LGE), Brea, CA. All significant features that might affect the structural performance during the regulatory drop and puncture events were modeled. During the course of fabrication, special processes were developed and valuable lessons were· learned that can be applied to full-scale prototype and production cask units manufactured in the future.